Standards
by Indy the Wonderful
Summary: A touch of rambling and some plot. Or: a dash of plot and copious amounts of fluff.


"You'll need to raise your standards a little." Jinx said, looking at the ground several hundred feet below. Tiny dots, wandering tourists and the scattered pets they clutched with leashes meandered about, pretending to be awe of the ugly hunk of twisted steel she sat on. She wished she could see the Seine, the waters was muddy and ugly and it suited her- not the picturesque lighting and dusk sky she faced now. A few strands of stray hair blew into her face when a south-bound plane flew overhead, rustling the leaves of blowing hats away from the people below. She wished she was going South, or North, or anywhere but here. (Not that she'd been missing him for weeks and this was the best she'd felt in a while, not at all.)  
"What?" Kid Flash asked, staring blankly at her, as if she'd spoken in french or something.  
"C'mon Kid, you know what I mean." She spit.  
He stared at her, the look of a dumb child adorning his face. He smiled, letting the corners of his mouth lift into a crescent, causing several of his freckles to disappear into his dimples.  
"Oh come on, you don't think I don't understand?" She snarled out, curling her arms into her hunched form. What did he take her to be, a fool? God, it was like he thought she couldn't see the way that he was constantly surrounded by those… those girls that wore short skirts and even smaller tops, carrying signs and screaming when he passed by in a blur of red and yellow. He didn't think that she was blind to the way the news always managed to catch the exact moment when he'd shoot the prettiest one (always a blond, never a brunette or redhead. Always a blond.) a smile and then sign her poster, her forehead, or even once some stupid fangirl's stomach, of all things. (Not that she was jealous, no, definitely not!)  
"Understand what?" He asked, jolting her from her thoughts. She was not jealous, not consumed by thoughts of him and his silly fangirls. She was just tired, tired and letting her mind wander.  
"What?" She questioned, confused. Had she asked him a question? If so, it had fled her mind.  
"What?" He asked again, flopping his head to the side as he stared at her. He looked like a silly bird, the type that always squawked obnoxiously when looked through windows of pet shops.  
"What?" She asked again. They stared at each other, eye to eye, before Kid Flash smirked and she bit her lip to suppress her own growing smile. Her eyes flew to the ground below, and then back to Kid of their own will.  
"Hey." He said, with laughter in his voice, and bumped his shoulder into hers gently. She shoved back, as ever, a little bit of anger pushing through. She hoped he'd leave and she would stop smiling, then get off this damn tower and sneak onto a flight back to the United States and it'd all go back to normal. Although, these past… twenty or so battles, this had become the norm for her and Kid. Robin's near purple face when they returned was also not unusual, and that had to be her favourite part. Boy Blunder, with his stupid masked face aflame and the rest of the Titans near growling in fury behind him. "…tonight?"  
Damnit! She'd blanked while listening to him, again!  
"What?" She inquired dumbly.  
"What?" He repeated mockingly, pushing her shoulder again. Jinx almost, almost, let herself sag into his shoulder, but forced her spine to stiffen and her posture to scream of discomfort. But he was so warm… something had to be wrong with him, he was like a damn radiator! So hot, and all the time, even in the freezing arctic last week, even in Jump City just an hour ago. Hot in both ways too. Her mind whispered, and she shuddered. Sure, he was tall, and thin but muscular in exactly the way she liked, and maybe, maybe, his lips were red and soft, but even if he was attractive, which he obviously wasn't at all, his overwhelming stupidity would more than cover anything good about him.  
"Stop it." She muttered. Her mouth was cramping and her lip was bleeding on the inside from the worrying of her teeth.  
"Stop-" She could sense his next words from a mile away. And he'd have that look on his face, the one where his left eyebrow lifted and he grinned like a mad-man. (Or smirked roguishly, in the way that made her breath catch when she was trying so hard to keep her cool, her brain whispered.)  
"Kid Flash…" She growled warningly. She knew, oh did she ever know, that it didn't matter what she would say, he'd go and say those damn words anyone, just to get a rise out of her. She never scared him, not even during that one battle- it'd be close to a month since that'd happened, hadn't it been?- when she'd held a supercharged taser to his lips and told him to get lost or get killed. He just blinked slowly looked down at her, the edges of his crystal blue eyes coming together when he grinned. He kissed her on the cheek and left, not even speeding away, just gently walking past her from the corner she'd backed him into, brushing his fingers against her's for the briefest moment, before disappearing in a blink.  
"Stop what?" He grinned, raising one eyebrow rakishly. Oh, he was pushing it now! She shoved him in the shoulder with her palm, hard as she could. His arm was very, very warm underneath her palm. Hot, it was hot, and it burned against her bare palm, making her notice just how could the air was in Paris in the springtime. She made now move to remove her hand, she leaned into the warmth of him and smiled, catlike, up at him. He was constantly flirting with her, dragging her of for what most would consider 'dates' in exotic locations, was it so wrong for her to do the same and lead him on a tad, if it meant getting a share of his delicious warmth?  
"You know," Kid Flash began. "you can always, you know, come be a good guy, with me." He offered half jokingly, with a smile in his voice, the words the same as ever as he stared off into the lights of the city. He'd been saying that for six months, six long and confusing months. "Robin keeps telling me I'm an idiot for trying, he thinks your some sort of villain or something."  
"I am!" She spit back, although her words lacked the venom she needed to get the point into his thick skull. She was bad! Bad luck, she was bad and she loved it. (Although, he was awfully nice. And she hated the morons at the HIVE who did nothing but waste her time.)  
She still held fast to his shoulder, her long slender fingers holding him exactly where he sat, although it didn't feel like he was eager to move in the slightest. He removed her hand, and she cringed. Right, enemies, that's what they were. She shouldn't have let herself get her mind spinning, even if he did move her closer and he had initiated the contact, he probably regretted it or something. Enemies.  
"I-" She started, although the words promptly abandoned her when he took his arm and wound it around her waist, pulling her across the scaffolding and to his side. The metal scrapped cold against the sliver of her thigh revealed when her skirt rid up and the freezing material touched the edge of her prized garter and stocking clips. She coughed, suddenly finding the air she breathed hard to process. Oh, oh damn, he was warm in a soft, cashmere feeling way, and yet scalding, in the way only Kid Flash could be. The heat pulsed in smooth waves like the purr of a cat and soothed her mind, relaxing her tense shoulders.  
He wouldn't mind, she doubted with all his flirting he couldn't have been insincere for once. She thought he had to have a little interest in her, after the hours and days he spent dragging her all over the globe, and he wasn't like the boys back at the HIVE- for whom girls were pawns and who darted after anything with legs and a half decent face. She was always, always one of those girls they chased in the hallways and cornered by the lockers. For the first few years anyway. The rumours had been the worst, she distinctly remembered. The whispers along the halls as she walked alone, swinging her free arm from side to side as a show of defiance to those who once stole her books and called her 'cat brained'. Felines were considered very, very intelligent by most, if not all, and yet those mocking sing-song words still threw themselves around her brain and bothered her thoughts. That had been the day, the day she got the feline nickname, the intercom had jarred her sleeping classmates from their slumber and called for her to the headmaster's office. That was the day she knew she was going the wrong path, although at the time it was but nagging nerves in the back of her head. Now, she was sure that her predictions had, for once, been wrong. She'd had good luck, half of those girls, the very ones who mocked her, worked in less than savoury places for less than… nice, or moralistic, people. They never touched her, not physically or magically, after that day in the headmaster's office. She was sitting in France, with a hot guy who she might be partially liked by, who was laughing now?  
And, with that thought, she was brought back to her original dilemma. Could she, or should she, think- allow herself to think- that maybe Kid was being sincere? Was it wrong for her to hope so? She'd been fading from the HIVE Five, she was away whenever Kid saw it fitting to drop by the headquarters and take her for a somewhat consensual vacation to the random (usually expensive. Was he rich? She didn't know how well being a hero paid, but she guessed it had to be a hefty sum after the four freakin' dozen red roses in England last month.) place of the hour. Seriously, Russia, Sweden, Chile, Canada, Papa New Guinea, she'd been to about half of the world's countries in less than a year with his help. He must, Kid Flash the honest and good and pure and perfect superhero wouldn't be dishonest, would he?  
"I what? C'mon Jinxy, don't leave me hanging!" He laughed as he spoke. It fit him, the warmth and joy. Jinx had had actually never, so far as she could think, seen him without a smile and a joke to offer her. Staying with him seemed like a good idea, but like she'd ever dream of being so bold as to say so. She'd end up following him to his home and then showing up, out of the blue, one night when she just totally gave up with the dumb HIVE boys and needed him even more than usual. She missed him, a little bit, all the time, like having lost a favourite ring or a family member to death.  
"I think that's a good idea." Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Her mouth was running like a damn broken tap. It'd leaked in little bits, telling him "whatever" instead of pure rejection or smiling when she got the rose and knew he was still there, even if he'd pretended to leave. She'd been leaking pressure and all it had done was made her into an obsessor, a madman, thirsting for his presence and longing for his dumb jokes and the silly way he took all matters and the fact that'd she'd seen him serious exactly once and that'd been with her. "You need to raise your standards, I know that I'm here at the bottom, being a villain and everything and I'm-" And she was a villain, as plain as she could put it.  
"Jinx, c'mon, be serious." He grinned at her from the side, looking down at why she say propped against his side.  
"I am." She always was, she couldn't ben funny if she tried. She definitely wasn't funny when she tried, it tended to make everything worse.  
"Hey!" He exclaimed, grabbing the corner of her face as she looked off the edge of the tower and longed for the world below, where she could hide away and never have to speak to him, to him and his confusing words, again. She jerked her face violently out of his grasp, and tucked her back into his side, his arm now curling around her middle fully, to graze her back. If she though about it in the right way, it was like he was holding her there. She wished it was him, and not herself and the damn affections she still had despite trying her damn hardest to block them out, holding her there. "Jinx."  
It wasn't like she liked him or anything, not in the slightest. She hated him, really. He was a Titan, after all, and she was pretty much down with getting her butt kicked to the curb by a bunch of spandex-clad idiots with a dumb war cry like something out of a low-budget commercial for cheap toys. At least before, it was always all of the Titans that came, but now nobody but Kid Flash came to thwart her carefully laid plans. And she… she was beginning to think that Paris, where she assumed they were due to the Eiffel Tower she sat on, was a much better place to be that out with her team. One of the thorns dug into her head, and she smirked a little, knowing that the first few had had their thorns, until she mentioned she liked them spiky and sharp in the middle of a fight, and they began appearing in full bushes at her doorstep. (She didn't even throw them away anymore. Her room looked like a floral shop, not really a scary secret lair anymore.)  
"What!" She snapped hatefully, wishing him gone and there all at once. It burned in her stomach, crawling up her throat and soldering in her skull.  
"Jinxy, I need to tell you something." Kid said softly, the humour gone from his voice.  
She gave no reply, and he took it was an invitation to speak.  
"I'm goingbacktoStarCityandIdidn'ttellyoucauseIthoughtyouwouldhatemeandplasecomewithme-"  
"What?" She cut him off mid ramble. "Slow down, I can't hear a damn world you're saying." She didn't even know he could use his super-speed with his voice, and it was, admittedly, a little bit cool.  
"I'm going back to Star City." She'd heard that part.  
Oh. It hit her like a ton of bricks, he was going back going back. AKA leaving her. Oddly enough none of the magic that seemed to spark uncontrollably from her fingertips when she was frightened or irritated, like it did when she fought the Teen Titans. She just slumped, a breath she hadn't even been holding flooding the air in front of her mouth.  
A tear slipped from her corner of her left eye, and chased one that flowed down her right cheekbone, both tasting like salt and regret when they touched her lips.  
"And I want you to come with me." She was getting tired of being confused, but what the hell just happened? "I have an apartment a-and it's a penthouse- I painted the walls orange and I have a fireplace- a whole living room- and a room filled with books I've never read. There are two bathrooms and I can paint the guest room, or wait, I'll give you the master bedroom, and it'll be pink and purple and I promise I won't go and look at the unicorns in your sketchbook or destroy your room like I did last time-"  
Master bed room? Painting? Fireplace? Her, he was talking about repainting the master bedroom for her, and about the two bathrooms, and how she would have one. "Are you… inviting me to live with you?" She questioned incredulously.  
"I think my standards are too low," Rude! She was the one he was chasing after and villain or not- wait, never mind. "I rose them and you're like, super totally out of my league, but I think that you can do better, and the first step to that better is me-" He stopped abruptly, and turned red before correcting himself. "Not me, n-not like I'm better or good for you're bad or, like, this is not working, is it?" He slouched in defeat, and Jinx whipped another tear from her eye. He turned those intense blue eyes of his from hers, and dropped his warm, softly calloused palm from her chin.  
"Nope." He was a blundering idiot, that was for sure.  
"I'm sorry, then." Kid Flash sounded like a kicked puppy.  
"Don't be." She breathed deeply, before doing as he'd done moments earlier and forcing him to face her with her tiny white hand on his face. He was tan, a lovely shade that made her look like a ghost. "Just be honest with me." He was probably still going to reject her, even if he'd offered to let her live with him in the most awkward round-about way she'd ever heard she could find a way to mess that up. For sure, bad luck was her specialty after all. (Maybe it was just her, but her whole life just seemed to go ever so slightly wrong, and just when she thought she'd gotten good luck it soured like bad milk.)  
He sighed deeply, but twitched the corner of his lips upwards and turned to face her, face, and funnily enough, the tips of his ears, aflame. "Jinx," He began, and her name on his tongue made her blood turn and heat in an alarmingly desirable way. "I'm never getting any better than this. Want to come to Star City and live with me?"  
She knew her answer from the moment he'd said 'want'. Damn her apprehension and her obligations to the HIVE, if the spandex wearing speedster with the IQ of a box of crayons wanted her to up root her life and come to a new city and live a new life, with him, than she was damn well sure going to accept. Actually she couldn't stand him and his stupid cocky attitude and his stupid ability to sneak her away from the middle of a fight to Paris for pastries and his stupid cute face and the stupid, stupidly nice, damn rose that held back the right side of her hair. A rose! What did he think she was, some floozy fangirl to be blown away by some flower? She'd been, she now realised, trying to do so since the way her hand shook and her voice faded when he asked her to come with him that fateful day in the museum, late at night and mid-battle. Since their very first meeting she'd sought the words to tell him even if she called him dumb and blew up things as fun and wasn't good for him, not in the way he deserved, and even if she still clung to the desperate doubt to cushion a blow that wouldn't come, she knew it would not come right now when they were both serious and real and open, she wanted to tell him yes. Here she was, faced with that word and all the meaning it'd ever held for her. All of those other moments, those other times' she adored the word, scorned it, used and abused it, they all were nothing compared to the sheer forced of her smile when she thought of living in the penthouse he'd told her about in a rush.  
"Yes." Like the world was held in that tiny word, the smiles she only gave to him in secret where given to his face.  
He wasn't even surprised, but the pure glowing light and the vibration of his body let her know his excitement and joy all the same. God, he practically glowed, and even her dim aura livened. "By the way," He yelled as he got to his feet and lifted her by the under arms and the backs of her knees, like a bride, in a millisecond as always. "my names' Wally, Wally West."  
Wally, what a stupid name.  
It suited him perfectly.


End file.
